An indispensable guide for authors of articles, texts and posts.

"... Especially for you," the great combinator replied. "You, I notice, are constantly tormented by the agony of creativity. Of course, it is very difficult to write. I, as an old leader and your penman, can testify to this. But I invented such a thing which eliminates the need to wait for a sweaty shaft of inspiration to fill you in. Here, let me see.

And Ostap handed Ukhudshansky leaf, which was written:

CERTAIN SET.
AN INDISPENSABLE ALLOWANCE FOR COMPOSING ANNIVERSARY ARTICLES, PLAY FELETONS, AND ALSO PARADE POEMS. OD AND TROPAREY "
')
I. Ilf, E. Petrov, "The Golden Calf"

Habr is still more media than just a forum and a party “for one’s own”. This I mean to what you want - you do not want, and by publishing a topic, you are, in fact, engaged in journalism. On Habré, Alexander Amzin ’s book on Internet journalism has been mentioned many times. The book , in my opinion, was a success, and deserves an honorable place in the bookmarks of each. However, one link is good, but a lot is better. Since I have been working side by side with journalists for years, I myself have picked up everything from them. Under the cut - a gentleman's set of tasty and useful links.

In the topic, everything should be fine - both form and content. Let's start with the form.

Very fast and easy to use set of rules of the Russian language . The main thing on this site is the search bar at the top. Write there the word (or part of the word), in which you doubt, and see what happens.

50 receptions letter Roy Peter Clark . Although there is a lot of things about the content, most of the techniques are devoted to exactly the style and form.

Nora Gal. The word is alive and dead . Very useful and exciting book about working with language and style.

Go to the content.

There is such a thing as “standards of journalism”. Having heard the word "standards", many think that it is something like moral principles or obligations. In other words, good journalists follow standards, and bad ones deliberately violate them. In fact, it is in the literal sense of the word "standards" - as GOST or ISO. That is, guided by them, you can read any article and determine that it is - journalism, or PR / propaganda / bullshit / artwork. Approximately as in quality control, for example, sausage, an expert, guided by standards, produces a series of tests and measurements, and concludes: "This is a first-class sausage, this is the second, and that one is not a sausage at all."

Some other news and Some other news - 2 A very good popular statement of standards. After a short workout in any text, violations of the standards are really striking.

List of cognitive distortions . Any admin will say that for confident and effective use of the system, you just need to be well versed in its bugs. This also applies to the brain. Unfortunately, the Russian list is almost entirely red, so it is better to master the English version .

The rules of demagogue . Comments are an integral part of a good topic. Unless they roll into flame and holivar. Keep yourself in hand!

Translations. Reading and understanding a foreign text does not mean to be able to translate it well.

Textbook on translation from English to Russian . The correct translator translates the text in whole paragraphs, not words. Often you have to break a sentence into several, or completely redo its structure, throw out something, add something. Different languages ​​have different verbal constructions. So, a bad translation from English is unmistakably recognized by the abundance of verbs in the passive voice, which is used ten times more often in English than in Russian (except for bureaucratic jargon: “I signed the relevant documents”, etc.)

Dictionary of false friends of the translator . Many borrowed words of the Russian language do not mean that their English counterparts. For example, compositor is a typesetter, not a composer at all, Dutch is Dutch, not a Dane. This dictionary can simply be read in a row. Very exciting Pulp Fiction!

Use on health!

UPD: Thanks kikaha for another useful tool: quittance.ru/tautology.php

UPD2: Another very good technique has surfaced in the comments .